Let me begin by saying that I personally believe that Pope Paul VI is a saint. I know very little about his early life, but his life as pope was a cross that I would dare anyone to try to carry it. He tried to lead the Church during one of the most tumultuous times in history. No . . . the hurricane was not triggered by Vatican II. Protestants, Jews, and atheists are not part of the Vatican II generation. They too went through a period of social, moral and political unrest and deviation.
Now, to answer the question of the canonization of modern day popes and not older popes, this is my personal insight. Take it or leave it. I won’t be offended and I’ll stick to it until proven wrong. I believe that the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints is following the program that St. John Paul II set for it. It was his strong belief that people needed saints that were closer to them in history. This was a personal opinion of his, not an infallible doctrine. However, he directed the Sacred Congregation to put on top of the pile the more recent cases and work backward in history. I didn’t make this up. You can find this out for yourself in any biography on John Paul II. Peggy Noonan wrote a great one.
There is a certain advantage in John Paul’s logic. I don’t know if he had this in mind. When you’re working on more recent cases, you have the advantage of eyewitnesses. When working on cases such as Pius IX, you have to go back into what they wrote, what someone else wrote about them, what a historian has to say and then you have to sift through all of this to separate fact from fiction. It’s harder work and more time consuming. Interviewing eyewitnesses is much faster. Verifying information when your sources are still alive keeps the process moving.
In addition to this, the Church always hesitated when it came to canonizing popes, but it had nothing to do with lack of evidence regarding their sanctity. It had to do with politics. When the Church and the State were wed, popes were not only spiritual leaders, but they were temporal leaders as well. Regardless of their sanctity, some nations considered certain pope an enemy because he aligned himself with that particular country’s enemy. This image of Pope X was handed down. Years or even centuries later, some popes are persona non grata in certain countries. The 20th century popes don’t have those entanglements with national politics. Someone like Pope Paul VI was hated by many, because of his stance on birth control and his revision of the liturgy and loved by many because of his love for the Church and for the world, despite the issues and headaches.
Some say that because there is no longer a Devil’s Advocate, we have these quick papal canonizations. The Devil’s Advocate was never a person. I’m not sure where some people get the impression that one single person had this much power that he could stop a beatification or a canonization with a simple veto. The Devil’s Advocate was a team of cardinal theologians whose job it was to make sure that the candidate was truly Catholic and had lived a heroic life of virtue. The spokesman for the committee was often referred to as the Devil’s Advocate.
St. John Paul reformed the process. When he did so, he added a layer that was not there before. This made the office of the Devil’s Advocate redundant. Today, the candidate is screened at the local level, usually his diocese or if he’s a religious, his order. He has to pass a very strict scrutiny. There are rules that have to be followed. It’s not just a matter of a diocese or an order deciding. If they don’t follow these rules, their submission will be returned to them.
They submit their research to the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. There are two more layers of scrutiny. The cardinals in the congregation read what is submitted to them. They can ask questions, turn it back for clarification or simply say that it’s not satisfactory. There has to be a consensus among the cardinals that the material presented represents a heroic life of virtue. They write their report. Everything is submitted to another team of cardinals. These must be theologians (not all cardinals are theologians). They go through all of the evidence with a fine tooth comb. If they find any theological problems, they report it to the Prefect of the Congregation. Nothing proceeds until that particular point is resolved. If they find no theological problems they sign off on everything and return it to the Prefect. The Prefect then writes the request for the pope asking that this person be declared Venerable because he has lived a life of heroic Christian virtue. The pope reserves the right to read through every piece of paper again or have his staff do so. He can simply read the synopsis that comes with all of the paperwork.
The miracles are separate. The miracles are studied after it is established that the person has lived a life of heroic Christian virtues. It is the miracles that the pope can dispense with, not the heroic life of virtue. The pope must give witness that he believes that this person lived a life of heroic virtue, before he commands the Church to venerate this person. We have had many cases when the person was canonized without any of this, even without a beatification. These were cases where the saint was a friend of the pope. The pope knew him personally and he canonized on his own recognizance.
Because there are three layers before the pope, the Devil’s Advocate became redundant, since each layer has the power to stop the process from proceeding. In the past, the postulator gathered the information and organized it. It was sent to the Sacred Congregation where it was studied and voted on. Then it went to the pope. You needed that buffer that the office of the Devil’s Advocate provided. This was the second layer.
